


snow still melting

by arbitrarily



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Genre: Christmas Party, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fist Fights, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-02 22:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2827727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fallout of St. Kilda’s and the girls and all that’s not what he expected, which is bull, because it implies he expected something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	snow still melting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [petragem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/petragem/gifts).



> Happy Holidays!

 

Christmas is coming on in less than a week.

The Christmas party that year’s held in the squad room. The budgets have been slashed, so here they are: celebrating in the office. The bullpen's crowded as if there’s a serial killer on the loose and the superintendent’s called for all hands on deck. Someone’s hung tinsel over the doorways and put up a Charlie Brown-style Christmas tree, tiny and barely decorated, sadder than it would’ve been without a tree.

Stephen finds her alone.

Conway’s nursing whiskey, neat, in her self-designated corner. Christ, it's like Ebenezer himself came clanking down to celebrate with Marley’s chains for festive jewelry.

Some of the guys have gotten into the spirit though, natty tacky sweaters or jingling reindeer ears on their heads. Conway’s in a worn chambray shirt, sleeves rolled, dark slacks and a pair of scuffed boots. She looks knackered, that long frame of hers slouched and folded. ’tis the season, alright.

He approaches her – like he said, ’tis the season and make merry. “Hey there,” he says.

Conway lifts her eyes to him, and there’s the faintest glimmer of surprise there, and he likes that.

“Hey,” she says.

The fallout of St. Kilda’s and the girls and all that’s not what he expected, which is bull, because it implies he expected something. Six months is a good long time to expect something to happen.

See, he hasn’t so much as spoken to Conway in a good length of time. He’s still working amongst the past and the long dead while she’s handling the fresh bodies, gotten the solves. After the girls and after the dust from that mess settled, they both returned to where they came from. Never once did it occur to him to take a jaunt down to Murder, sidle up alongside her desk and shoot the shit. He never picked up the phone, never drafted an email. He assumed the next time they’d talk it’d be all shop, a new case.

He doesn’t think she’s the sort where he’s ever going to be able to grab a coffee or a pint with on a regular schedule. Being with Conway always feels like an accident, an auto-wreck. You didn’t see it coming, and then – there she is.

He knows she recently closed a by-the-book domestic shooting that past week. He keeps an ear to the ground where Murder’s concerned; figures he’ll get his in. He’s got St. Kilda’s to show for it, but then he’s also got the blessing and curse of Frank Mackey at his back, avoiding him like the clap, so, well, here we are in Cold Cases still, eh?

“Plans for the holidays?” he asks her, for lack of anything else worth saying. She eyes him sidelong as if she knows that’s why he’s asking.

“Not particularly,” she says, takes another sip of her whiskey and he watches her throat as she swallows.

“Yeah, yeah, me neither.” She didn’t ask, but he offers the information anyway, like a bad suspect in the box with her. Bing’s singing off someone’s MP3 player or computer and his voice travels tinny and barely audible.

She’s watching his face, something critical in how her gaze drifts from chin to mouth to eyes and back down again. Those cold dark eyes of hers aren’t as cold as he remembers them. She’s got lines creased under them, the faintest hint of crow’s feet when she frowns (her default expression) and the exhaustion somehow makes her appear warmer to him. That might not be it, it might be something else – that he knows her, in his own way, he knows her better than any man in this room right now – and that’s what makes her warmer to him.

“You should be making new friends around here,” she tells him, gesturing with her mostly empty glass.

Stephen eyes the Murder boys. None of them are paying them much mind now. They had at first – not at the party, but in general. After they closed the case he got a good two weeks of grief from the boys. Wanted to know if she kissed him while she buggered him but good, and ha ha ha, that’s a good one fellas. He supposes they went for him as he made an easier target than her. He’s always been able to roll with a joke; with Conway, they all but seem to roll off her, and where’s the fun in that?

“Eh, they’ve already made up their mind about me, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, there’s that determination’ll drive you right up to the top.”

“Cheers,” he says and downs the better part of the gin punch in his glass. It’s terrible.

Conway looks on the verge of a smile – full mouth, hard woman – and pulls a bottle of whiskey from behind the potted plant on the desk next to her.

“Cheers,” she echoes and passes the bottle to him.

 

 

 

He’s pretty well drunk. And if he is, then Conway has to be at the least tipsy, because she has matched him drink for drink (and then some, and isn’t that just her way: match you beat for beat and then go that one step further).

If Stephen’s pretty well drunk and Conway’s at the least tipsy, then the rest of the boys are full-on pissed. Bing’s voice has been replaced by a rowdy sing-a-long, the lyrics smudged, the words a secret only granted to those after a predetermined blood-alcohol level’s been met.

It’s around this time that a fight breaks out. Mix enough booze with these boys, and violence will abound. Happy Holidays. A Murder guy and a Robbery guy, that’s who starts it, and fuck knows why. One minute it’s all the muddled shouted chorus of a Pogues song, and the next, Robbery’s throwing fists and Murder’s throwing his own abuse.

Stephen glances to Conway; she’s got an arm wrapped around her waist, elbow bent and glass lifted, both eyebrows raised as she watches in what looks like a morbid take on entertained.

It’s when he’s looking at her that the fight – like a snowball gathering in size as it descends down a mountain mid-fucking-avalanche, you've even got the white collar crime boys in for blood and a pounding – reaches the both of them and a fist connects with the top of his cheekbone. Stephen gets hit – fucking sucker punched – and he stumbles back against some detective’s desk. A gold frame with two grimacing children rattles down against the computer’s keyboard and a cup full of pens overturns.

And just as quickly as the fight started, it dissolves, the superintendent yelling, “alright, alright, enough, enough, you get the fuck out, find a pub for that,” and Stephen stumbles back to his feet.

The expression on Conway’s face is difficult to read, but when isn’t it. If he was a less forgiving man he might call her smug. No wonder none of them can stand her.

“Time to go?” she says, her smile full of teeth.

 

 

 

They cross the carpark. Stephen and Conway take a seat on the hood of his not-too-dirty car. Every other streetlamp is lit, the rest burnt out, casting odd shadows over the lot and the both of them.

“You’ve got a piece of shit for a ride, Moran.” She kicks her foot lightly against his front bumper.

“Does the job,” he says, but he’s wincing. He can feel his eye swelling already. Christ, he hasn’t been punched in the face in an age. It feels like he’s spent the better part of his adult life avoiding such a fate.

She doesn’t ask him if it hurts. Instead, her hand curls around his upper arm, the arm closest to her, and pulls, just a little, just enough, that he turns to face her. Her hands are cold. She holds the palm of one against his swelling eye and he flinches.

“Stay still,” she says, quiet and firm, so he does. Her hand is softer than he expected; it feels good. He stops himself from leaning into her touch, pressing his face into her offered hand. It’s suddenly vitally important he remembers each part of his body she touches with her hand: his arm, his cheek, his face.

It’s the kindest gesture he has ever seen her give, a concession he has no right to have ever expected.

Her thumb brushes just under his eye and then she pulls away.

“Enjoy explaining that one over Christmas dinner.”

He laughs, the sound startlingly loud. He’s actively kept thoughts of hearth and home and family from his mind the entire month of December, but here they are. Here’s Conway bringing them back into the picture. “I’ll blend right in with the lot I should reckon.”

Silence spreads between them. It’s not a particularly awkward silence, but rather one you share with someone when it’s alright to be quiet together. You feel safe enough to not use words. There are some things he’d like to say to her – wildly, he can feel the words _I’ve missed you, you know_ bubbling up in him, as if they worked together longer than one day, but it feels that way, doesn’t it? that day takes up the same space inside of him a month or a year or several would hold – but he never will. They made a good team. Even now, sitting on the hood of his car, he thinks: we make a good team.

“You gonna be good to drive?” she asks him.

He squints and then looks at her, sidelong. She’s not looking at him but out towards the meager traffic traveling alongside the lot.

“I’ll dry out,” he says. “I’ll be fine.”

“Sure.” A pause, and then she says: “I’ll wait.”

 

 


End file.
